


opia

by Zekkass



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Character Study, Daemons, Gen, daemon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 06:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zekkass/pseuds/Zekkass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce might have (had) a daemon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	opia

**Author's Note:**

> Written for trope_bingo over at dreamwidth. Thanks to legete for beta-reading this.

Bruce doesn't have a daemon. It is a terrible thing.

He is alone, soulless, facing the world and himself with no one at his side. No cat rubs at his fingers, no bird rides his shoulder, nothing and no one is there for him when his control slips, when he has an incident.

Anger leads him to destruction leads him to guilt leads him to shame. Humiliation. He lies naked on stone exhausted, too tired to move, not yet, and he curls his fingers, almost makes a fist.

He's too tired to be angry.

He's too tired to stop his thoughts from conjuring up thoughts of laughing children, laughing soldiers, all pointing at him. He's come naked to school, he's shown up to fight the army without the Hulk. He's something to be laughed at, pitied.

(Irritation stirs. Irritation leads to...)

He breathes in. Holds it. Counts to ten. Exhales. Repeats. Slowly lengthens his breaths until he's in control again, until the images are gone. He's not angry. He's not ashamed. He's naked in a desert and needs to get up and go before he's found.

Before he hears the baying of hounds from the military, daemons trained to track him to the ends of the Earth.

He opens his hands and moves to get up. No dog meets his hands to support him, no strong-backed creature that is his soul given flesh.

The sun is setting, and he is alone.

\--

Bruce had a daemon. It is a terrible thing.

As a child he had one. All children have daemons. All children have daemons that react to the world around them, that shapeshift according to whim and will and imagination. Bruce was happiest when his daemon flew in bird-form, made him think that someday he could too.

His daemon spent most of her time as smaller creatures, however. Mice, skinks, geckos, frogs - all creatures that could and did hide in his clothes, trying to stay small and unnoticed.

It speaks volumes about him that when his daemon finally settled on a form, she chose a frilled lizard.

She still hid in his clothing, slept around his neck, and they were always, _always_ together.

Even during the accident. When Bruce's life is changed - one might say ruined - she was there. She was curled around his neck as usual, whispering comments in his ear, warnings -

\--

(They say Bruce Banner's soul was killed by the birth throes of the Hulk.)

(They think the Hulk is a monster, created by the gamma rays.)

(They're not wrong, but they're not right, either.)

\--

Bruce has a daemon. It is a terrible thing.

There is no longer a frilled lizard sleeping around his neck, but that does not mean he has lost his soul.

The exposure to that many gamma rays should have killed him. He should have been left a twisted corpse, not a mutated monster.

But: no one has tested the effects of gamma rays on daemons, and no one ever should.

She's always there under his skin, a slow roll of power and anger and he can touch his soul whenever he wants, whenever he's willing to have an incident.

He has his daemon. He has a soul. It's big and green and angry and there for the world to see, more exposed than a nerve, and he won't tell anyone what the Hulk really is. He won't let anyone know just how much of a violation it is, to have the Hulk lash out at anyone - everyone - around him.

He doesn't have a daemon. He musn't.


End file.
